


Boy At Heart

by Quiet_Shadow



Series: Alternating [3]
Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Genderfluid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Shadow/pseuds/Quiet_Shadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seiji can’t bring himself to acknowledge his femininity...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy At Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Another part of the Alternating universe, written from Seiji's POV and explaining how he see himself. I have half in mind to make something similar for the others, but I don't know yet if I will.  
> Enjoy. <3

Despite his changing gender, Seiji had a hard time thinking of himself as a girl. Sure, he knew that, technically, he had been born female, but when he thought about himself, no matter in which body he is, he kept referring to himself with a male pronoun. And he was, after all, the closest thing of male heir the Date clan had, even if he was only male half of the time.

Curiously, nobody seemed to acknowledge the fact outside of his family. For some reason, people just… forgot he was supposed to be the other gender. It was like some magic was a work, clouding people’s thoughts over the Date’s middle child. It wasn’t rare to have someone refers to him as a boy one day, then speak of him as if he had always been a girl the very next day.

Which, had not the Kourin armor chosen him long before birth as its wearer, he would have been. that single thought made him feel a bit sick.

He knew that his refusal to be treated as anything but a boy distressed his parents sometimes. His mother still kept girl clothes and frilly dresses in his size for him to wear, but he had never been able to bring himself to put them on. His father tried to not say anything, his sisters looked a bit disappointed, and his Grandfather… The solid, stern old man just looked at him in sadness. He should have least had made a token effort to please them, he knew that, but he just… couldn’t. They blamed themselves for the situation, of course, and perhaps they were right to do so.

His early upbringing, before he turned six years old, had been fairly quiet. He had had more… leeway. Sure, the fact he was sometimes a boy and sometimes a girl had caused quite the stir in their family, especially since no one on the outside noticed or believed them when they tried to speak about it. Had their child been cursed? Was he some kind of mutant? Or did the spirits, foreknowing no male heir would be born from Date Nadeshiko, had tried to bless them with the closest thing of a real son they would ever get?

Whatever it was, it caused great panic.

The Date clan already had a first daughter in Yayoi, Seiji’s older sister by five years. Two children only in ten years of marriage… who knew how many more would be born? In the end, they took no decision to raise Seiji one way or another until they knew for sure. They waited and prayed for another child before deciding if Seiji should be raised a boy… or a girl. Though, in a way, by giving their baby girl the very name of Seiji, a name more traditionally given to boys, they had known deep down they wouldn’t get a son.

Then his mother gave birth to the desired third child. A daughter again, his sister Satsuki. After that, his mother tried for another, but her body remained flat, and soon enough, it was acknowledged she was now barren.

Thus his Grandfather decided Seiji would become the clan’s heir. His parents bowed to his will. And Seiji and his sisters’ feelings were never taken into account.

From age six to twelve, dresses were forbidden to him. No more dresses, plush toys were barely tolerated. Toy swords and cars and balls were encouraged. To come home with mud on his clothes and hairs in disarray, proof of rough games with the other little boys, was met with approval. His speech was corrected, his way to stand and walk too. There was little to nothing feminine about him as he grew up, aside of his uncontrollable return to his female body from time to time.

As he had no control over the shift at the time, he was forgiven, but instructed to stay quiet about the matter. While his sisters were encouraged to become more feminine and beautiful, letting their hairs grown past their shoulders, having tea parties with their dolls and playing jump rope, Seiji was taught kendo, how to play the flute and how to take care of bonsai trees. Granted, Yayoi was also taught kendo, and she was quite good at it, but it wasn’t the same thing. Seiji was taught to not look at other girls as playmates, but was taught how to find them attractive, so perhaps someday he might date and even marry one.

Everything in his education aimed at making him consider his femininity as something shameful, and to force him to fully embrace his male boy and having the corresponding mindset. It had worked, too, despite his sisters’ attempts at making him join their ‘sisterhood’. But no matter how much Satsuki tried, he couldn’t bring himself to care about dolls and sharing girl secrets anymore. As for Yayoi… the very idea of flirting with another boy was sickening. Time had slowly erased the little girl he might have felt like once upon a time, and proofs only remained in photos of his early years, easily explained to foreigners. Why, Seiji wore girl clothes because he had a weak health as a child and it’s a popular belief that girls are more healthy! The ribbons in his hairs? Yayoi had just played with him!

For a time, as he slowly learned to control the shift from boy to girl and back, he had even almost forgotten that he had really been a girl. His male body had become, in his mind, his true and only one. His conversion into a boy had worked, worked even too well in some parts. But his Grandfather had been truly happy and his parents had tried to be.

Then puberty had struck, and reminded them all that, despite the upbringing they had given Seiji, she remained part girl.

Menstruation, the most natural proof of womanhood, had just ripped apart years of careful conditioning, or self imposed illusions. The apparition of small curves over his girl body had been like a slap to the face. Suddenly, the Date clan was faced with the truth that Seiji was a girl in body if not at heart anymore, and that they probably did her a disservice her in refusing to acknowledge that fact. They hadn’t quite backpedaled, nor had they suddenly forced Seiji to be a girl instead, but…

Well, nowadays they tried to subtly push Seiji into sharing some time with his sister as a fellow girl.

However, Seiji… couldn’t. He was a boy, not a girl. He had been taught to be a boy for years before his family relented and released the pressure they had put on him. By the time they did, the damages, so to speak, had been done. He couldn’t share with Yayoi and Satsuki the natural complicity they thought they ought to have. He couldn’t go and share a bath with them without feeling ill-at-ease as they paraded naked around him. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at his own body without flushing and instinctively trying to cover himself. They had tried to make him more feminine, but so far, they had had little success.

Wearing makeup? It repulsed him. Jewelries? He looked at them in distaste. Long hairs? Well, he had accepted to let them grow to shoulder length, it was perfectly sufficient. Skirts and dresses? Over his dead body! Flirting with a boy? He had actually been sick when they suggested the mere idea he should try. Bras?... only if he really, really needed one. But really, if he had to stay in a woman body for any given length of time, he usually preferred binding his chest tightly, as to conceal as much of the offending breasts as he could. He knew, as a matter of fact, that he wasn’t the only Troopers to do so.

Ah… the other Troopers… He didn’t know what to think about them, sometimes. Never before had he thought he would ever meet someone like him… and so unlike him.

Male or female at will, just like him, able to freely choose between the two. All bearing a man face when they first meet, but deep down, at the first glance… they all had know what the others were. It was like an optical illusion; one moment they were facing other boys, the next they were seeing other girls. Without even having to shift.

It was both weird and exhilarating at once. To not be alone anymore, to finally meet someone who knew what it would feel like, to be in the wrong body… Except it wasn’t quite true. Seiji fully acknowledged that upbringing had played a major part in what he was and what he considered himself to be, and that the same could also be told about his new friends and brothers -- and sisters -- at arms. None of them dealt with their dual gender and identity like Seiji did. Some were like him, leaning more on the male side, and the others were more girls in spirit, or very… neutral, trying to reach some sort of balance between their two genders and what society would expect of them based on gender roles.

He respected that, he really did, and could acknowledge if not fully understand that some had been raised by parents wanting a baby girl instead of a son. But he found dangerous the fact they felt so at ease displaying their femininity in the open.

Didn’t they understand they were at war? That bad things could happen to them if someone started to have even an inkling of what was hidden away under the armor? A male warrior would certainly be granted swift death. A girl… probably wouldn’t.

So he worried, secretly or not so secretly, after some of the members of their little group. Sometimes, he wanted to shake them in frustration, sick with worry as he was, but he never did. One did not mistreat a woman. So he stayed quiet and watchful and protective, because he considered it was his role as the only openly male member of their troop. Sure, he got teased about that a lot, but it felt like the right thing to do for his newly found friends.

Let them, even if it was madness, enjoy what they thought they were or ought to be if the armors hadn’t chosen them as their bearers and changed them long before they even took their first breath.

One thing remained certain for the Kourin bearer, though.

Seiji wasn’t a girl, and never would be.

**End**


End file.
